Trending

Physics

From the forces that keep athletes twirling and sliding, to the weird laws governing the world of the very small, to the far-out concepts of time travel and alternate universes, physics covers a lot of interesting territory. Here, Live Science keeps you abreast of all the fascinating physics discoveries.Physics

Related Topics: Elements, Chemical Reactions, Technology

Latest Updates

A Hubble Space Telescope image shows RS Puppis, one of the brightest Cepheids visible in our galaxy. Astrophysicists use stars like this to calculate the expansion rate of the universe.

How the Universe Stopped Making Sense

By Rafi Letzter

What's going on?

An artist's depiction of the first identified interstellar object, 'Oumuamua.

A Second Interstellar Visitor Has Arrived in Our Solar System. This Time, Astronomers Think They Know Where It Came From

By Rafi Letzter

When 'Oumuamua passed through our solar system in 2017, no one could figure out where the object came from. But astronomers think they've worked out how Comet 2I/Borisov got here.

An illustration of gravitational waves.

Nobel Prize in Physics: 1901-Present

By Live Science Staff

Here's a look at all winners of the Nobel Prize in physics, including Steven Chu, Aage Niels Bohr and Enrico Fermi.

big bang, expansion of the universe.

Nobel Prize in Physics Honors Scientists Who Transformed Our Ideas About the Cosmos

By Jeanna Bryner

The Nobel Prize in physics has been awarded to three scientists for unraveling the structure and history of the universe and for changing our perspective of Earth’s place in it.

an image of the the universe's largest object, the Hercules Corona Borealis great wall

Cosmic Record Holders: The 12 Biggest Objects in the Universe

By Adam Mann

Things that make you go whoa!

An illustration suggests the behavior of big, complex molecules spreading out like ripples across space.

2,000 Atoms Exist in Two Places at Once in Unprecedented Quantum Experiment

By Rafi Letzter

The new experiment demonstrated a bizarre quantum effect from the double-slit experiment at an unprecedented scale.

Gravity arises from the distortion of space-time itself.

Physicists Search Universe for Evidence That a Fundamental Force of Nature Is Out of Whack

By Paul Sutter

Physicists are scouring the universe for evidence that one of the fundamental constants of nature, Newton's gravity, is not constant at all.

Artist's impression of a black hole.

Black Holes As We Know Them May Not Exist

By Mara Johnson-Groh

Black holes may not have singularities at their heart, but instead may be stuffed with dark energy.

An illustration shows what Planet 9 might look like orbiting far from our sun. Now, at least two physicists think this picture is wrong and it's actually a black hole.

Is Our Solar System's Mysterious 'Planet 9' Really a Grapefruit-Size Black Hole?

By Rafi Letzter

It probably isn't a black hole, if it exists at all. But two physicists think we should check to see if it's a black hole anyway.

Military vehicles carrying DF-17 missiles parade through Tiananmen Square in Beijing on Oct. 1, 2019, celebrating the 70th anniversary of the founding of the Peoples Republic of China.

Why You Shouldn't Worry About China’s New 'Hypersonic' Nuclear Death Machine

By Rafi Letzter

China already had the power to kill you with nukes. This doesn't change anything, but it could fan the flames of an arms race.

This image shows the region where the ancient galactic structure was found. The blue shading shows the area it covers. The red objects in the zoomed-in bits are the 12 galaxies.

Huge Cosmic Structures Already Existed When the Universe Was a Baby

By Rafi Letzter

Astronomers have discovered the oldest cluster of galaxies ever seen.

The KATRIN experiment's giant spectrometer passed through Eggenstein-Leopoldshafen, Germany in 2006 on its way to the nearby Karlsruhe Institute of Technology.

Neutrino Experiment Reveals (Again) That Something Is Missing from Our Universe

By Rafi Letzter

The KATRIN experiment has turned up a new, more-precise-than-ever measurement for the barely-detectable neutrino mass.

When the universe was very young, almost all of the antimatter disappeared. And physicists don't know why.

A Strange New Higgs Particle May Have Stolen the Antimatter from Our Universe

By Paul Sutter

Physicists have proposed that a trio of particles called Higgs bosons could be responsible for the mysterious vanishing act of antimatter in the universe.

LHC particle collisions

Einstein's Theory Predicts a Weird State of Matter. Could It Be Lurking in the World's Largest Atom Smasher?

By Tim Childers

This mysterious matter was predicted from Einstein's theory of special relativity, but physicists can't seem to find it!

gravitational waves from two merging black holes.

Hidden Gravitational Wave Signal Reveals that Black Holes Are 'Bald'

By Rafi Letzter

Are black holes bald or hairy? It all depends on the details of a fleeting overtone.

This is the deepest image ever of the site of the neutron star collision. The white box highlights the region where the kilonova and afterglow were once visible.

Afterglow of Colliding Neutron Stars Would Outshine Our Sun

By Rafi Letzter

A new, hours-long Hubble study of the collision site revealed never-before-seen details of the neutron-star merger

A sped-up film of the black hole is presented alongside its light curve, brightening sharply in the X-ray spectrum at 9-hour intervals.

A Distant Black Hole Brightens Every 9 Hours, and No One Knows Why

By Rafi Letzter

Something's disrupting the distant black hole's accretion disk, but no one knows what it is.

an image of the crab nebula, which green yellow and pink light

Right Again, Einstein! Wobbling Pulsar Confirms General Relativity

By Tim Childers

A pulsar 25,000 light-years away is wobbling in a weird way. But Einstein's theory of general relativity predicted it more than a century ago.

A NASA illustration shows a neutron star surrounded by a disk of matter.

Astronomers Decode Weird X-Ray Pattern Coming from Neutron Star

By Rafi Letzter

Astronomers have detected a neutron star system blasting X-ray light at Earth and detected a rare, months-long pattern in those light bursts.

Artist depiction of a supernova explosion in space.

'Einstein's Biggest Blunder' May Have Finally Been Fixed

By Tim Childers

The cosmological constant has plagued physicists for more than a century.